Is muscle memory after detraining real?

 

Especially for older people the question often arises, if it’s too late and too much effort to get back into shape once you have been inactive for extended periods of time. There is good news, so let’s look at this topic a little more closely.

If you are older and your active workout days are months or even years in the past, your body remembers your fitter shape from long ago.

The term in exercise and sports science is “muscle memory”.  It means that your body can regain muscle size and strength much faster after detraining compared to basically starting from scratch.

So, if you need about six months to build some appreciable muscle for example and then stop working out for several months, it will probably only take you a few weeks of training to get back into the same shape instead of months.

Scientific literature points in the direction that muscle cells keep extra nuclei which are gained during training and that in turn helps muscles rebuild more efficiently later.

This is good news since you are actually building a foundation with every set and rep you do in your younger years.

See the scientific article here “Skeletal muscle memory”